Raizen hung from the ledge and couldn't do anything but watch.
The gap was shrinking. Not fast - millimeter by millimeter, the hydraulic door winning its slow war against the creature holding it open. The lizard's armoured scales were fracturing at the edges, tiny pieces breaking away and dissolving into golden particles that the wind caught and carried upward into the dark sky. Each fracture cost it mass. Each lost scale made the remaining ones bear more weight. The math was simple and the math was losing.
The aircraft climbed. Fifty meters above the platform now, maybe sixty, rising through the spaces between Ukai's upper trunks, the branches whipping past in the darkness. The wind tore at Raizen's clothes and hair and numbed his fingers on the ledge, and below him the world was a constellation of distant amber lights getting smaller with every second.
